I moved to New York City 10 months after 9/11 and the City was still shaken. (I was actually here on 9/14 and a few days thereafter.) Every morning my train arrives at Penn Station in Manhattan and I walk through the station under Madison Square Garden and exit on 7th Ave. Walking through the station, I still have a hard time accepting the presence of all the soldiers with automatic rifles, gasmasks, body armor, and I’m not counting the NYC police, Amtrak police, Port Authority police, and security personnel.
Three years after arriving in NYC the city seems to be generally back to “normal” – economic activity, tourism, and the like – but the police and the army (and I’m sure other policing entities) are now randomly searching personal bags in the subways and stations. It isn’t like the airports, it’s just, “I need to check you bag!” as you’re walking to an exit or entering a station.
How can I believe we are winning the “War on Terror” when I look around me and it seems we are “progressing” towards a police-state. How can I believe that our foreign and domestic policies are making us safer? Seeing an every increasing police and military presence “protecting” us (and that isn’t meant to be pejorative) does not make me feel safer. It makes me feel as if the situation is only getting worse. Why else over the span of three years is the police and military presence so much more pronounced? Is this how we are to judge success?